Some Gardeners I Have Known 153 
has been to maintain a sort of experimental garden where I 
might learn flowers, study them from their first seed leaves, 
watch their manner of growth, and rejoice in their first bloom. 
How eagerly I have awaited this event, this manifestation of 
the seen from the unseen, ignorant of the precise form it 
would take. It has been as marvellous to me as if I had stood 
at the elbow of Deity when the first forms were spoken into 
life, and my eyes had been the first to see the results. I can- 
not fashion a flower, but I can grow them, and thus repeat the 
miracle of creation. So I plant my seeds, obey the laws, and 
at my bidding a world of loveliness springs into existence. To 
me life is life, and all life divine; and I have no more desire to 
strip a plant ruthlessly of its beauty, than I have to pluck an 
arm from a child, or to disfigure its face. The whole develop- 
ment of a plant is sacred to me, and it has a right to fulfill its 
life just as I have mine; and when this is accomplished, and 
its bloom is passing, I remove all but one perfect seed-vessel, 
which is carefully labéled and preserved for future use; for in 
this way the plant is saved from a needless exhaustion of its 
vitality. Flowers are protected in my garden, and by making 
the conditions favorable for plant forms to grow to perfection, 
I feel that I codperate with the vast cosmic law, that is guiding 
every manifestation of the Spirit through varied and progress- 
ive material forms: in my small way, I can thus aid and fur- 
ther the great cause of evolution of that, which is ready, at 
this particular moment of its existence, to take the special 
form of plant life in my garden. Does not this place in the 
reverent gardener’s hand a divine commission? ‘This may 
seem a fine-spun theory to the orthodox, but it gives a joyous 
impulse to the watering-pot! 
Encyclopedias of horticulture become intensely interest- 
ing when we grasp that they are the genealogical records and 
biographies of various manifestations of Spirit on a lower 
